Vice President JD Vance said negotiations over ending Russia’s war in Ukraine are focused on security guarantees for Ukraine and territory Russia wants to control — including Ukrainian territory that Russia isn’t occupying — as the US tries to broker a peace deal between the two nations.
“There really are two big questions lingering out there, and in some ways it’s very simple, but in some ways it’s very complicated,” Vance said in an interview Wednesday with Laura Ingraham on Fox News.
“Number one is, Ukraine wants to know that it’s not going to get invaded again by Russia. It wants to know that it’s got territorial integrity long into the future. The Russians want certain pieces of territory, most of which they’ve occupied, but some of which they haven’t,” he said.
President Donald Trump is stepping up his push to bring Russia’s war against Ukraine — now in its fourth year — to an end. Trump held a summit in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week and talks at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and European allies on Monday.
Vance said he thought a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders could help move the negotiations forward on their goals.
“That is really where the meat of the negotiation is,” Vance said. “The Ukrainians want security guarantees. The Russians want a certain amount of territory.”
The US is working to set up that bilateral meeting, but a time and place have not been determined. Trump has said that if that meeting goes well, he’ll look to follow up with a trilateral summit with Putin and Zelenskiy.
Vance told Ingraham that he has spoken to Putin over the phone “a number of times,” and described him as “more soft-spoken than you would necessarily expect.”
“The American media has a particular image of him,” Vance said. “He’s very deliberate. He’s very careful.”
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
About the Author
